Ripe For Reaping
by Morello
Summary: A night's work for a Reaper. Four very different souls. Hints of Will and Grell. Not cheery.
1. Too Many Souls

This one's quite depressing. Even Grell's not his usual self. Don't read if you're not in the mood for angst.

Ripe for Reaping

Too Many Souls

Sometimes Grell found William's coldness powerfully attractive, but there was a difference between coldness and cruelty. Lately William had been giving him too many assignments of the kind he hated most and the most colourful of all the reapers was beginning to feel faded. Looking at tonight's death list Grell's heart sank into his polished high-heeled ankle boots. This was going too far. Enough that he was working the graveyard shift – again – doubtless by way of a reprimand for arguing against the necessity of reaping no fewer than four names on last week's list – but there was no need for Will to make tonight's final name this one. No – let someone else do that job.

Grell turned on his elegantly pointed heel and marched purposefully in the direction of William's office. For once there was nothing but anger in his mind and several junior reapers scuttled out of his path, their eyes wide with fear. Grell stripped of his habitual flamboyant flirtatiousness was an alarming sight.

However, as Grell swept through the corridors he became aware of a strange atmosphere that had somehow pervaded the whole building. Everyone seemed subdued, from the more senior Reapers to the most humble filing clerks. By the water cooler people were talking softly, eyes downcast. As the sense of misery seeped into his soul Grell walked more slowly, wondering. Outside William's office a young Reaper – only recently qualified judging from the small, standard-issue scythe that dangled limply from his fingers – was slumped in a chair, head bowed.

"What on Earth's the matter?" Grell demanded, his voice too loud in the unusually silent corridor. "Did someone _die_?"

It was supposed to be a joke, but like everything else lately, it fell flat. The young Reaper looked up at him, his face heavy with fatigue. "Too many souls," he said. "This influenza – they're calling it the Russian Flu. So many young ones…"

"Oh," said Grell, softly. "I see…" He hadn't realised. There had been a lot of children recently – more than usual – dying of fevers and the flu. But there had been other, ordinary deaths too, and he'd failed to make the connection. So William hadn't been cruel…

"How many?" he asked. "How many have you reaped?"

The young shinigami shrugged. "I've lost count. Four this afternoon – the oldest ten. Three from the same family."

"Oh." For once, Grell was speechless. Scanning his list – the one that had so angered him – he read: Martha Williams, 81, heart failure, 1.15 a.m. – Clara Symonds, 18, tuberculosis, 2.02 a.m. - Wilberforce Payne, 42, falling from ladder, 2.56 a.m. – Madeline Fairchild, 5, influenza, 4.28 a.m.

William emerged from his office, and, for the first time, Grell realised that the normally unflappable manager was also looking very weary. "Grell," he said, strain audible in his voice, "I thought that sounded like you. Do you need something?"

"Ah – no. No. I – it's nothing. I – should get going."

"Yes," William replied. "It's a busy time."

Grell retraced his steps, lost in surprised thoughts. William had devised these rosters, as always. Surely it was merely a coincidence that he had given Grell so few children that he hadn't even noticed that they were in the middle of an epidemic? If not – then William was showing preferential treatment – even being – _kind_. Was that possible? Or was it simply that he doubted Grell's ability to cope with the work? That was more likely. Yes, that would be the reason. William T. high-and-mighty Spears had obviously decided that Grell wouldn't be up to the job – probably thought he'd freak and cause unwanted drama –

_Which – you were about to do_, Grell admitted to himself. _Well, I'll show him. He doesn't need to treat me like some over-sensitive trainee! Time to go. I'll just check out my scythe…_

But when the clerk in the Death Scythe Allocation Department handed over Grell's beautiful, personally customized chainsaw, the Reaper hesitated. "This won't do," he told the clerk. "Not tonight. I need something smaller. Give me the scissors, too."

"I - I'm sorry, uh, Sir - you can't take out two different scythes – not without authorization," the clerk replied nervously.

"What? Don't be ridiculous! I'm a professional Reaper – I need the appropriate tools for the job. Hurry up – I'm on a tight schedule tonight." Grell allowed his impatience to show, but concealed his irritation at being referred to as 'sir'. Why could no one get it right? Only the Undertaker ever bothered... But that wasn't important at this moment. Getting hold of a suitable scythe was.

"I'm very sorry. You'd have to get authorization from a manager. I could phone Mr. Spears –"

"No! No – don't do that. He's busy. Just give me the scissors."

"Then return the - the – whatever _that_ is."

"I need both."

"I'm afraid you can't have both."

Grell shoved the chainsaw back over the counter with such force that the clerk scooted backwards on his office chair with an audible shriek.

"Fine!" Grell growled. "Just give me the damn scissors."

The clerk hurried to obey.


	2. Martha Williams  A Disconnected Soul

Soul One. Already, Grell's not having a good night.

Ripe For Reaping II

Martha Williams – A Disconnected Soul

It was a foggy night. Grell had always been fond of reading when there was no one to play with in the office, and now, as he landed gracefully on the rooftop of a ramshackle house in a poor area of Cheapside, he amused himself by quoting from the opening of Mr. Dickens' _Bleak House_, which he'd read in monthly instalments during the early 1850s. _Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city._

"A great and dirty city," Grell repeated, smiling. "My kind of place. Now then – let me address the cast of characters for tonight. Ah yes, Martha Williams – our ancient pensioner 'wheezing by the fireside'. Hm."

Rematerializing at street level, Grell pushed open a narrow door – merely a board on creaky hinges that bore a prophetic resemblance to a coffin lid – and entered one of the meanest dwellings he'd ever encountered in all his years of reaping. "It seems poor Martha has neither a pension nor a fire," Grell murmured to himself, as he negotiated the maze of corridors and flimsy partitions – some no more than ragged pieces of cloth hung from the low ceilings – that constituted the interior of this cheap - and yet still no doubt extortionate considering the quality of the service provided – excuse for a lodging house. In one small corner Grell spotted a straw mattress shared by five children of assorted sizes and genders, all equally filthy. A stout, broad-shouldered labourer stirred in his sleep on a palliasse of his own; no one else here looked nearly strong enough to challenge him for a share of it. The building was crammed full of people and the stink was indescribable. As a Reaper, Grell had never visited the realms of Heaven or Hell, but he was quite certain that this house would not be out of place in the lower of those two domains. He'd have to ask Sebastian, the next time he met the debonair demon butler, if his own lodging was as charming as this one.

At last Grell discovered Martha in a tiny attic room, as alone as anyone could be in such a crowded hovel. As soon as he set eyes on her, he knew that this reaping would be no fun – her true soul had already departed long ago. She half lay, propped against a damp, sagging wall of lathe and plaster, her eyes fixed on the ceiling where a missing roof tile had been replaced with a ball of scrunched newspaper, stuffed into the gap.

"What's that? What's that?" Martha asked no one in particular. "A bat hanging from the roof? Tell Davey there's a bat got in." Grell glanced at the other occupants of the small space – three bare-foot factory girls, none older than twelve. They all appeared to be sleeping. Making himself visible, Grell took out the scissors and knelt beside the old woman. To his surprise she looked straight at him and said, "Oh, it's you. I thought it was about that time." Grell was about to reply when she continued, "Only I can't pay this month. Michael got sick, and the doctor wanted a shilling. You understand. I could – you know. As usual." The wrinkled, emaciated face formed itself into a parody of a suggestive smile. Grell had seen far too many such lives to be sickened or concerned. Without a word he cut the frail soul from the worn out body easily – almost bloodlessly. The cinematic record needed teasing out, coiling around the blades of the scissors. When the mind had started wandering the records were always like this – the ends frayed and frames misplaced or disordered. The filing clerks wouldn't thank him for bringing them one of these – but what could he do? A soul was a soul, even a partially disconnected one like this.

A small voice behind him asked politely, "'Scuse me, Sir. Are you Death?"

Grell turned to face the questioner – one of the little factory girls. Perhaps she was still half asleep? At any rate, she looked at him without fear.

"One of many," Grell told her.

"Has she gone – the old woman?"

"Yes, just now."

"Did it hurt?" the girl asked, still fearless.

"Not much. She wasn't really here." Grell had little time for children on the whole – that Phantomhive brat and his irritating cousin/fiancée annoyed him beyond measure. But this child was almost a woman – she did a woman's work already, although she only received a child's wage for it – and her calm was a welcome change from the screaming that usually accompanied unintentional sightings of him, which always gave Grell a headache.

"I like your hair."

Grell smiled. This was an unusually intelligent child. "Thank you."

"Will you be _my_ Death?"

The question took Grell by surprise. "Oh," he said, "I really couldn't say. I don't make the lists."

"I hope you will be. I like red. You're a kind Death."

Grell had never, in all his immortal existence, been called kind before. He was suddenly very glad that he'd had to leave his usual scythe in the office.

"Do you know how I'll die?" The girl was fully awake now, wide-eyed, and as Grell looked at her more carefully he became aware of a strange, unearthly glow about her ragged dress and her hair.

"No one is told how they'll die," Grell replied. "What is that light around you?"

"Oh, that's only the phosphor," the girl said, matter-of-fact. "We all glow like this. It get on your clothes an' everythin'. Pretty ain't it?"

"I see. You make matches."

"Yes. We all do. That's why I asked – you know, about dying. I ain't gonna get phossy jaw am I? That's a bad death."

"Yes, I know it is." Grell had taken the souls of some victims of that disfiguring cancer, caused by exposure to deadly white phosphorous in the match factories. The disease started with pain in the jaw and teeth, slowly spreading to rot the bone. He hoped that this child would not be added to that grim record.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I really can't tell you. I don't know how people are going to die until the day or night it happens. I get a list then."

"My name's Daisy Dean," the girl told him. "I ain't on your list tonight am I?"

"No."

"I ain't never had the toothache, not hardly," Daisy said. "Only on an' off, like."

"I have to go now," Grell said. He felt wretched, and he hated it. What was it about children that always made him feel so guilty? This situation was his own fault for becoming visible. William would be furious if he found out.

For the first time Daisy looked scared. "I _do_ get the toothache sometimes," she confessed, in a whisper. She looked straight at Grell and he flinched at her resolute gaze. "Can't you take me now?" she asked, in a voice that barely quavered. "I don't mind it's being early. I'd rather that."

"I'm sorry," Grell said again. "It's not allowed." He reached out a black-gloved hand, and touched her forehead with gentle fingers. "Go to sleep," he said. "This has only been a dream."

A shudder went though her small body at the touch of Death, and she fell forward, but Grell had kept his gloves on, and she was only sleeping. He caught her, and laid her tranquil form next to her two friends.

Checking his watch, Grell found that he only had ten minutes to get to his next appointment at a sanatorium in Hampstead.

Hoping that the night wouldn't get any more depressing, Grell left the lodging house behind, travelling invisibly through the all-enveloping fog.


	3. Clara Symonds  A Consumed Soul

Thank you so much to everyone who has read, favourited and reviewed this story. Reviews make me very happy.

This fandom is consuming me at the moment! This story fits between "An Inexpensive Soul" (in progress), and a Grell's back-story fic, not yet posted. I hope it will all make sense in time : )

The Mount Vernon Hospital was a real tuberculosis hospital in Hampstead. Sadly, the Victorian belief that fresh air cured the disease was wrong, although being outside probably brought some psychological benefits. The more I find out about the Victorians, the more grateful I am for antibiotics!

Ripe for Reaping Three

Clara Symonds – A Consumed Soul

The room was spacious and well lit. A fire burned in the grate, and a wall-mounted gas lamp with a frosted glass shade cast a soft glow. The young woman who lay in the narrow, iron-framed bed watching the slow progression of the minute hand of the clock upon the mantle, had been sent to the sanatorium to recover from tuberculosis. As soon as he sensed her soul – the whisperings of the record faintly audible to him merely in the presence of the death scythe – Grell realised that it was not only the disease that was killing her.

There was a letter on the washstand beside the bed – a much folded and refolded letter, lying on top of a ragged-edged envelope. Grell checked his pocket-watch, careful to remain invisible this time. Clara still had four minutes left.

Grell glanced around the room, comparing its simple, empty cleanliness with the squalor of the lodging house he had just left. This room had large windows, one of which was half open even at this late hour, in the belief that fresh air was the best cure for consumption. Grell almost laughed at the thought that anyone might consider the thick, polluted fog to constitute 'fresh air', but then he remembered the fetid fug emanating from overcrowded humanity in the previous house, and the poisonous phosphor clinging to Daisy and her friends, killing, even as it made glowing angels of them. Seen in that deadly light, this place was a paradise of order and calm.

In this modern, spacious hospital everything was done for the best. The floors were scrubbed every day, the beds made up with clean linen, the patients given everything possible to aid their recovery. Each room had its own balcony, and the hospital gardens were used in all weathers except for heavy rain – even the very sick were wheeled out in bath chairs to take the cure of sunshine and air.

Grell wondered at the progress medicine had made since his birth, in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century. Some patients did recover from consumption, he knew – although more died. But only the wealthy could afford a private bed in a fine hospital like the Mount Vernon. Clara Symonds had clearly come from a good family. And yet she was about to die alone. Well – consumption was an unpredictable disease – if consumption was actually what was about to end her life. Perhaps her family had been told that she was getting a little better, or that there were no serious concerns at present. Indeed, the girl's body, although thin, was not nearly as emaciated as many consumptives Grell had reaped in his time, and her skin lacked the bluish tint he had learned to associate with the final stages of the illness. Why was her soul straining so to be free of her body? He could almost hear its restlessness, like a butterfly fluttering helplessly against a windowpane.

Grell watched dispassionately as Clara reached out a hand to the washstand, and grasped the letter. He tried to take no interest in either the girl, or the contents of the letter. That last reaping, and Daisy's quiet desire for death, had disturbed him more than he cared to admit. It was essential that he should retain a professional distance this time.

Clara was not the artist's ideal of a tragic consumptive. She was no Marguerite or Violetta – only a rather plain, short-limbed, mousy-haired girl. She would not make a beautiful corpse. She wouldn't have made a beautiful bride. Perhaps the author of the letter had thought the same thing…

But that was no concern of Grell's. It was not his place to feel sympathy – William had lectured him about letting emotions get in the way of doing his job on too many occasions now. If he couldn't feel _nothing_, then surely it was better to feel the contempt he had managed to nurture for the futile struggles of human kind? But then, when he'd succeeded in convincing himself of his contempt, matters had got out of hand and contempt had changed into hate.

Still, contempt was less painful than pity, and Grell called on it now. Ridiculous humans! This stupid, ugly girl, clutching that letter that had been read and wept over so many times that the folds had become holes in places! The whole thing was likely to fall into four neat pieces at any moment. Yes – look – it was happening. The letter was coming apart in her hands…

Clara gave a little gasp, and her attempt to gather the torn page back together was so truly pathetic that Grell felt he should laugh – and yet –

And yet, Clara's face was tragic – not stupid at all – and her plainness was of no consequence, because what Grell was seeing was rare even for an experienced Reaper – a human heart breaking – the heroine of her own, small, sad story dying for love.

Grell had no need of his watch to know that Clara's time was up. He had no need of the scissors, either. This soul had reached its own end, and that was a kind of strength – almost a miracle. A butterfly that could break a windowpane.

The cinematic record unwound gently around Clara's still body, telling a common enough story – a one-sided love; a rival, who was also a friend, succeeding where she had failed; a slow decline. Grell had watched this plot a hundred times before, although this ending was unusual. Most people recovered from such blows, in time. Was this true love, or extreme hysteria? Grell found himself divided. There was a part of him that revelled in such drama – the part William found exasperating and the demon Sebastian was half repelled and half attracted by. What could be more operatic than dying for love? And yet, so many ordinary souls managed to continue despite the torture of unrequited love. Did that imply that they were stronger, or only less sensitive? Was it better to feel such an all-consuming passion once and die, or to feel less, and live?

Grell considered. Perhaps love denied – forbidden or unrequited love - was the only kind that could be felt at such an extreme pitch that the strings binding the soul to the body would snap under their own tension. When love was returned, passion inevitably faded; that was simply the nature of desire. Of other kinds of love - love that had settled into companionship - familial love – the bond between parent and child – Grell knew nothing. He remembered nothing at all of his mortal life.

For a moment Grell stood beside the bed looking down at the empty body of Clara Symonds. When her relatives were summoned they would say the disease must have taken a sudden turn for the worse – but at least it had been quick. The nurse might comment that Clara looked very peaceful. No one would know the strength of emotion that had burned inside that unremarkable shell.

No point in feeling sorry. No point in feeling anything. Ten past two already, and two more appointments to keep before the night's work was done. Clara Symonds' records would have to be amended from 'tuberculosis' to 'broken heart'. The clerks were really not going to be pleased with the records of this night's reaping so far.

Oh well. Another hour, another soul. At least this next one held the promise of some humour. Death by falling from a ladder - there must be some kind of a joke in that, if only of the slapstick music hall variety.

Without another glance at the corpse of Clara Symonds, Grell headed in the direction of Shoreditch, and the soul of Wilberforce Payne.


	4. Wilberforce Payne: A Misdirected Soul

**Thank you very much for all the faves! I'm on a bit of a roll with this story today, so here's the next chapter. **

**(The Old Nichol was a real London slum – the first to be cleared and redeveloped. All the streets mentioned still exist today, as does Arnold Circus and its bandstand! Of over five and a half thousand residents of The Old Nichol, only eleven moved into the new buildings. I found it a fascinating topic, throwing up difficult and interesting questions. There's lots about it online.) Ahem. End of lecture.**

**Ripe for Reaping Chapter Four**

**Wilberforce Payne: A Misdirected Soul**

Wilberforce Payne, 42, was due to die in fifty minutes' time. Still invisible, Grell appeared in Payne's one-room lodging, and quickly decided to entertain himself elsewhere until the time of death. The marked man, stooped of shoulder and looking much older than his years, was hunched over a small table, counting coins from a leather bag. He was carefully constructing four piles of coins – all mean enough: pennies, silver sixpences and shillings, and a smaller stack of crowns. Besides these, set slightly apart, were three gold sovereigns, gleaming in the dim light of a single candle.

Boring. Grell decided to go for a walk. This area of London he knew well, but parts of it had changed beyond all recognition in recent years, although this dilapidated dwelling on Curtain Street had received no attention in the recent slum clearance. It surprised Grell that Payne had chosen to rent such a poor room. The coins he had been counting were a pittance to Grell's mind, but to many of the inhabitants of Shoreditch and neighbouring Bethnal Green they would constitute a fortune of life-changing proportions. Most of them had likely never touched a sovereign in their lives.

Grell made his way through New Inn Yard, and crossed over Shoreditch High Street. The fog had lifted slightly, and as he approached the area that had once been the most notorious slum in London, he could make out the outlines of new buildings, some completed and already occupied, some half built. Further along the road stood neatly stacked piles of bricks ready for the workmen. _A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together_…

Soon the whole area once called the Old Nichol, or the Old Nichol Rookery, would be nothing but a historical record. Some claimed the place had been named for Old Nick himself, and, remembering back a few years, the idea was certainly an appropriate one. Sebastian, that black-feathered crow-demon, would have been right at home among those labyrinthine streets, however much he might like to play at being the genteel butler.

Best not to dwell on Sebastian now. "A time to laugh, a time to weep; a time to sow, a time to _reap_!" Grell paraphrased, suddenly itching for his beloved scythe. There had been some good reaping in this place, once upon a time! Grell had read in the Times that the seven hundred and thirty houses cleared in this area had been home to not far short of six thousand souls. He could well believe it. He had seen so many lives lived and lost in these few, crowded streets. The reformers had been right about many things: the slum had been a plague-infested rats' nest of a place. The streets ran with filth, the cellar rooms flooded in winter, the walls were crumbling. The people who lived here had been the poorest of the poor, and over the decades Grell had witnessed cinematic records of every kind of vicious behaviour – drunkenness, theft, prostitution, rape and murder. Tragedy too – infants 'overlain', smothered unwittingly by siblings or parents in their sleep – so many to a bed that sometimes there was no room for breath. And – with sickening frequency - the records showed babies whose deaths were reported as accidents of that kind when the reality was that some parents would rather give their children a quick death than watch them starving or sent to the workhouse. Grell had often been sent to reap in workhouses, and, as a result, he was never too harsh with the souls of this particular type of murderer.

Grell wandered to the end of Calvert Avenue, and, through the fog, made out the mound that would become an open space called Arnold Circus, planted with shrubs and flowers. One day soon there would be a bandstand here – a place for the community to meet.

The reformers would doubtless gather here to congratulate themselves on a job well done – a den of immorality eradicated. Grell climbed to the top of the mound, and spread his arms wide. The endless folly of mortals! In one way, the do-gooders had done good, of course. This area would be improved – there would be better quality housing, hospitals and schools. Vice, if not altogether conquered, would at least have been forced to retreat.

But the former inhabitants of The Old Nichol wouldn't be the ones to benefit. How could they – the peg-makers and wood-turners, the cobblers and chair-makers – afford the rent in these new tenements? It would be impossible on their meagre wages. No – new tenants would move in, and the reforming wave would sweep the poor further east, washing them up against the city boundaries and beyond, into new slums filled with old problems.

Nothing ever really changed. A century of reaping had taught Grell that much. Human beings never changed, at least. But the reformers, in their worthy zeal, had missed something. If human vice was a constant, then so was human virtue. Not all the records of these reaped souls had been dismal. Grell had seen tales of love and laughter, friendship and pride in hard work here, just as frequently as he had in the souls of the financially fortunate. What was true was that these slum-dwellers' bodies tended to wear out more quickly, and their life spans were pitifully short. But then, to a Reaper, all human lives were short.

Grell checked his pocket watch. Almost time. Wilberforce Payne had done well to survive to forty-two in this part of town. Why hadn't he been one of the few to move into the new buildings? He was certainly one of the very few who could afford it!

Walking back to Curtain Street through the diminishing fog, Grell hoped that at least the manner of Payne's death would be entertaining. He wondered what the other members of his division were up to tonight, and how many more victims of the Russian Flu they would be dealing with in the days to come. How he longed for a really vicious soul, so that he could take some pleasure in the reaping! If he was especially nice to William, maybe the unyielding supervisor might give him an interesting death list next time? Perhaps Payne's record would show some unlikely crime, but he was beginning to doubt it. This was not turning out to be one of the happier nights of his career.

Ten to three. Wilberforce Payne had six minutes to live. Grell made himself invisible again, and sat himself on the edge of Payne's windowsill to wait. His fingers felt damp plaster crumbling under their touch, and he got to his feet again hastily. Why would a man with enough money to move out choose such a hideous dwelling?

Payne was counting under his breath, slowly returning the coins to the leather bag. "Ten pounds, fourteen shillings and seven pence," he said, with apparent satisfaction. Then he picked up the sovereigns one at a time, holding them close to the candle flame, turning them to catch the light. He sighed like a lover marvelling at his sweetheart's beauty, replacing each coin into the bag with reluctant fingers. Drawing the strings to close the bag, and tying them tight, he murmured, "There you are. Thirteen pounds, seventeen and seven pence, all safe and sound. You'll see me right."

He picked up his small fortune, and walked straight towards Grell who moved out of the way silently. There was a small wooden stepladder leaning against the wall. Grell watched as Payne peered out of the window, and checked that the chair barring the door to his room was in place. Then he positioned the stepladder in the corner furthest from the window and climbed up it, reaching to remove a loose brick at the very top of the wall, where it met the ceiling, then stretching to push his moneybag into the gap. With trembling fingers, Payne replaced the brick. Grell decided that nothing interesting was going to happen – Payne would simply overbalance and hit his head on that very hard-looking hearth. Where was the humour in that?

There wouldn't be any harm in having a _little _fun, surely? It was time, after all. Making himself visible, Grell moved silently to stand directly at the bottom of the ladder and said in a pleasant voice, "Good morning. That's quite a hiding place you've found. I doubt anyone will _ever _discover your secret now."

Payne gave a horrified shout, twisted to look into the acid-green eyes of the grinning Reaper, flailed for a second, then plunged to the floor. As expected, he hit his head on the stone hearth.

Hm. Not _much_ fun – and now Grell had blood on his new boots. Not that he minded that. The red stain spreading over the hearthstone was the only interesting colour in the drab room, Grell aside.

"Right," said Grell aloud, "Time to reap." He would have loved his chainsaw here – how much better the room would look redecorated! But the scissors would have to do.

This was a messy job. For some reason Payne's body would not give up the cinematic record. Grell had to cut every piece from the reluctant corpse, sometimes one frame at a time, hampered by the stupid, tiny scissors. Checking his watch, Grell cursed. This was going to take all night! Eventually he found that if he could get hold of one end of a section of the record, he could pull it free by brute force, standing with his foot holding the body down, and yanking with all his strength. "Oh come _on_, you miserable miser!" panted Grell. "Give – it – up! It's over!"

At last the final frame came away. Grell checked the record quickly – a predictable tale of a child born into abject poverty, who, having some small success as a furniture maker as a young man, became obsessed with money to the point where the possession of it was everything and hiding it from constantly dreaded thieves had eventually led to his death. Wilberforce Payne had no surviving family – had never married – trusted no one enough to make close friends.

Wiping the scissors on Payne's ragged shirt, Grell shivered. What a pointless existence, enslaved to his golden sovereigns. Huh. How easily human souls were led astray! No wonder demons found it so easy to make their hellish bargains. Humans betrayed themselves all the time, usually without any need for supernatural persuasion.

Grell glanced up at the hiding place, then picked up the fallen stepladder, and placed it against the opposite wall. Let Payne's poor treasure stay hidden. Perhaps that would please his ghost? Grell had no doubt that Payne would become such a spirit, trapped here, close to the thing that had bound his soul in life. Eventually he might move on – such matters were not Grell's concern. Grimacing, Grell attempted to sort the pieces of Payne's record into some kind of order. Oh dear – he was going to be in big trouble with the filing clerks when he got back. Three complicated records out of three – not good.

Already it was nearly four o'clock. One more soul to go – the one he'd been dreading all night.

Trying to remain dispassionate, Grell murmured, "Well, little Madeline – your record should be straightforward enough." His night's work was almost over now – just this last appointment, and then he would be free to go home.


	5. Madeline Fairchild An Uncomplicated Soul

**Thank you readers and kind reviewers, and thank you for your patience. Grell comes to the end of his night's reaping.**

**I hope this isn't too anticlimactic - it ended up rather low key. I have a better sense of where this story fits into my view of Grell now, though. It's intended to come before the events of "An Inexpensive Soul" and, I hope, sheds some light on Grell's behaviour in that story (which is on-going). Much as I love Sebastian, it now seems to me that William is Grell's real destiny. There will be one more fic in this series, in which Grell discovers the truth about his mortal life. Chronologically, it will come between this and "An Inexpensive Soul", and will be posted as soon as I have time to write. **

* * *

><p><strong>Madeline Fairchild – An Uncomplicated Soul<strong>

Grell stood by the wrought iron area gate outside the Fairchilds' smart terraced house in a quiet road just off Kensington High Street. The fog had lifted enough to allow Grell a view of hazy stars above the neatly tiled roofs of the terrace and the regular blocks of the chimneystacks. Grell checked his pocket watch, and contemplated the solid wooden door of the residence, reluctant to go in. The door was painted some dark colour, impossible to make out in the yellow gas light of the street lamps – navy blue, perhaps or olive green. The door furniture was simple, heavy-looking, polished brass. Tomorrow there would be an addition – a laurel funeral wreath, tied with black ribbon.

The houses were tall, imposing, ranked together to form a sturdy, respectable bulwark against any threat. _An Englishman's home…_ Grell thought. But there had never been a castle strong enough to bar Death – not even for the space of a single breath.

Almost time – and still Grell made no move to cross the threshold. He had never felt such reluctance for his role. William would laugh at him, no doubt, and call him sentimental. "One soul is much like another," he'd say, "apart from those exceptionally rare cases when there's a reason to prorogue the reaping. Do the job and return to the office."

"Do the job, and return to the office," Grell murmured, aloud. Gripping the scissors resolutely, Grell passed through the door and into the hall, where a grandfather clock ticked loudly in the still night. The servants were asleep in their attic rooms, but Grell could hear a low voice, and the child's laboured breathing.

When he reached the nursery Grell paused, invisible in the doorway, surprised. There was a pile of presents beside the bed, beautifully wrapped and tied with ribbons, but surely it was too early for Christmas presents? Madeline Fairchild lay propped up on white pillows, an open box beside her on the wine-coloured counterpane. Despite her pallor, and the fact that Grell knew she had only minutes to live, the little girl was smiling. On a chair next to the bed sat her mother – the older face and the younger so alike that there could be no doubt about the relationship. The mother was smiling too – or trying to smile.

"No," she said softly, "It's not quite your birthday yet. But you can have this one early."

"Thank you!" Madeline whispered, her voice hoarse, and her breath rasping. She clutched a doll – a beautiful porcelain doll, with a painted face and real hair as long and golden as the child's own. Grell stared at the toy, something stirring in his memory. A doll – not like this one, but made of wood, with wide green glass eyes and a red silk dress. Grell was suddenly certain that the memory was a real one, from his mortal life; the first thing he'd remembered of that existence since becoming a Reaper.

"She's called – Daisy –" Madeline gasped. Grell started, thinking of Daisy Dean, whose own reaping would surely not be many years in coming.

Madeline's mother swallowed, and whispered, "That's a lovely name." Grell could see how tired she was after nights of dread and watching. Terror was not a sustainable state for a human soul, but it lurked close by, advancing and retreating with the fluctuations of the disease. Grell could tell that it was very near now.

Taking off his gloves, Grell moved silently to stand beside the bed. The mother shuddered, suddenly, as though she could somehow sense him. _Someone walking over your grave_, they called it, when mortals were touched by the presence of an invisible reaper. The phrase was appropriate enough.

As though she knew what was about to happen, Madeline's mother seized her daughter's hand, holding on as though she could keep the child alive with nothing more than the strength of her love. Even at this final moment, as he reached out to touch the little girl, Grell could see that the mother's hope was not quite gone – that remarkable human ability to believe in control where no control existed. Perhaps she thought that if only she had enough faith – enough hope – enough strength – then this thing would not happen to her – this thing that was happening all over London and throughout the country to mothers and fathers, rich and poor, vicious and virtuous alike.

Madeline's last breath was a sharp gasp in and then a long, sighing exhalation. Her mother sobbed, "No! Stay with me, please, stay, please, stay…"

Grell couldn't bear to look at her any longer. Quickly he cut the soul from the child's body, the cinematic record winding itself neatly around the scissors without any fuss. The tale of Madeline's life was a plotless story: a mother, a father, a beloved nurse-maid and a new, feared, governess, favourite toys, a pet canary, a certain garden in a neighbouring street where a broken wall allowed you to see into a wilderness of wild flowers when all the other walls were too high to peek over. Not quite six, and everything there was to tell had been told.

_A time to weep_, Grell thought, and yet he couldn't weep, even for this innocent child. There had been too many Madelines, over the years; there would be countless more.

Grell left the house empty, an echoing emptiness inside himself, perhaps in the place where a womb would have been, if he had been made female, as he knew he should have been.

_You had her for almost six years_, he thought, his mind on the grieving mother as he made his way back to the Shinigami offices. _I'm sorry that was all, but at least it was something real – something entirely good. _Grell understood, at that moment, that he would give anything – anything at all – to experience that kind of love and to hold his own child in his arms. _I would give my soul_, Grell thought, _if I could be what I should have been. _

Back at the office, the mood was even more sombre than it had been at the start of the evening. Grell took his collected cinematic records to the duty filing clerk, who, as he had expected, complained about the state of the first three.

"This is hardly helpful, Mr. Sutcliff," the young clerk at the desk admonished wearily. "One fragmented soul, one change of designation – _a broken heart_? Really! Hmm. And one mangled collection of fragments that will have to be cleaned and reordered. I already have most of my staff working overtime." He held up the short record of Madeline's life and scanned it with a cold, professional eye. "Oh well. I suppose you can't help the names on your list… At least this one's uncomplicated."

"Uncomplicated," Grell echoed. "Yes. Not – much of an epitaph."

"Oh, I don't know," rejoined the clerk. "I've heard worse."

Grell left him to his work, and wandered the corridors, reluctant to go home. Eventually he found himself outside William's office, without making a conscious decision to go in that direction. There was no sign of the severe manager, so Grell slumped, exhausted, on a chair in the corridor, trying not to dwell on his night's reaping, which, for once, had been truly grim. Instead he thought about Madeline's doll, and the memory it had sparked in him. Why should he remember a doll? Could it be that in his mortal life he had been female, and that some strange transformation had happened to him when he became a Reaper? He resolved to ask William whether such a thing might be possible – but not tonight. Not tonight. Tonight he would go home and sleep – but he found that he wanted to see a friendly face first. Or, if not exactly a friendly face, then at least a familiar one.

Grell fell into a doze, and started awake when the door of William's office opened and the manager emerged, looking as tired as Grell felt.

William stopped when he saw Grell, regarding him a little warily, probably expecting one of Grell's deliberately exaggerated and flirtatious greetings. When nothing happened he said, "Reaper Sutcilff? Are you finished for the night?"

"Yes," Grell replied. "I'm – just –" Grell found himself uncharacteristically lost for words.

"You should go home and get some rest," William told him, looking at him more carefully. "This epidemic is only beginning to take hold. We're going to be snowed under by Christmas."

Grell smiled, wanly. "Snowed under by Christmas," he repeated. "Ha. That's apt, anyway."

"Go home and sleep, Grell," William said. "Heaven knows I'm going to." Grell looked up, surprised, as William's hand rested on his shoulder, just for a moment, before he walked away.

**The End**

Thanks for reading.


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